Limited edition Oblique Strategies deck from Brian Eno Horrifying clown statue deep in the woods W3C insider explains what's wrong with cramming DRM into HTML5 - and what you can do about it Help send 15 kids from the Bronx to writing camp Reducing waste can help feed the hungry Bubble boy: Baby born inside intact amniotic sac Documentary on the punk scene in Burma Bradley Manning trial transcripts now available online, via crowdfunded stenographers In praise of leakers, including "The Unknown Patriot" who outed the US phone spying program DHS on border laptop searches: we can't tell you why this is legal, and we won't limit searches to reasonable suspicion Cool-looking science book I am ordering immediately Wisconsin legislators ban university from collaborating with independent investigative journalism center Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby sing "She Blinded Me With Science" Free-to-share movie on gangs in Birmingham: "One Mile Away" Picture Day: wry, superb coming-of-age movie Leaked top-secret court order shows that NSA engages in bulk, sustained, warrantless surveillance of Americans TWA's Idlewild lounge: Escher, eat your heart out Time for total war on patent trolls UN makes the connection between surveillance and free speech Han Solo in Carbonite Pop-Tarts NYT: Mexican Family Go Insane Study: couples who met online more likely to stay together Eyeball face makeup Making of "Man Of Steel" Art: compacted cube of demolished amusement park Can you trust a sociopath's memoir? Kickstarter: otherworldly glowing "jellyfish" for the sky Growing Up Bowie: Mark Dery's "All The Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock Matters" Living with HIV in middle age Scenes from #OccupyGezi Limited edition Oblique Strategies deck from Brian Eno
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 12:47 pm Brian Eno has released a limited-edition deck of his "Oblique Strategies" cards, for £60. Oblique Strategies is a legendary deck of creative aphorisms and provocations that will make you revisit your assumptions and find new ways through hard problems. I swear by them ("be the first person to not do a thing that no one else has ever thought of not doing before").
Read in browser Horrifying clown statue deep in the woods
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 12:42 pm This horrifying clown mannekin was reportedly placed on a hiking trail deep in the Oleta River in Aventura, Florida by a park employee who got it from the Enchanted Forest Elaine Gordon Park in North Miami.
If you went hiking through Oleta River in Aventura Florida last year, you probably shit your pants a couple miles in. Read in browser W3C insider explains what's wrong with cramming DRM into HTML5 - and what you can do about it
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 12:41 pm I've written before here about the move to get the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) to cram digital rights management (DRM) into the next version of HTML, called HTML5. This week,
EFF filed a formal objection with the group, setting out some of the risks to the open Web from standardizing DRM in the Web's core technical specs.
Read in browser Help send 15 kids from the Bronx to writing camp
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 12:29 pm Brad sez, "Fifteen high school students from the Bronx. Five dedicated teachers. A summer of learning that could change their lives -- and change the way kids learn all across America. This summer Paul Allison, (English teacher in the Bronx and co-founder of
Youth Voices.
Read in browser Reducing waste can help feed the hungry
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 06, 2013 12:21 pm Four billion tons of food are grown and raised worldwide every year.
About 25% of that goes to waste. Read in browser Bubble boy: Baby born inside intact amniotic sac
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 06, 2013 12:18 pm "Born in the caul" is a phrase that's connected with a lot of cross-cultural myths and superstitions — babies born in the caul are supposed to be destined for lives of fame and fortune (or, possibly, misfortune and grisly death, depending on which legends you're listening to).
Read in browser Documentary on the punk scene in Burma
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 12:00 pm Apropos of yesterday's
post about punks in Myanmar, Rene from Nerdcore sez, " German Journalist Alexander Dluzak did a documentary about the Burma punk scene a few months ago, here's
the trailer (with English Subs), he also sent me some pretty awesome pics for my blog which you can see
here.
Read in browser Bradley Manning trial transcripts now available online, via crowdfunded stenographers
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 06, 2013 11:14 am Freedom of the Press Foundation has begun publishing transcripts from the trial of accused Wikileaks source Bradley Manning.
The US military has refused to release transcripts of Bradley Manning's trial. In addition, they've denied press passes to 270 out of the 350 media organizations that applied.
Read in browser In praise of leakers, including "The Unknown Patriot" who outed the US phone spying program
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 06, 2013 11:06 am Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic, writing about all who brought
this news to light: "I hope and trust we'll one day celebrate the War on Terror leakers who kept reminding Americans that their national security state is out of control."
Read in browser DHS on border laptop searches: we can't tell you why this is legal, and we won't limit searches to reasonable suspicion
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 11:00 am The DHS has responded to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU asking when and how it decides whose laptop to search at the border. It explained its legal rationale for conducting these searches with a blank page:
On Page 18 of the 52-page document under the section entitled "First Amendment," several paragraphs are completely blacked out.
Read in browser Cool-looking science book I am ordering immediately
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 06, 2013 10:49 am Guidebook for the Scientific Traveler, published in 2010 and written by Duane Nickel, promises to be a tour guide to chemistry and physics points of interest all across the United States.
(Thanks Tim Heffernan!) Read in browser Wisconsin legislators ban university from collaborating with independent investigative journalism center
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 06, 2013 10:38 am The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is a non-profit that gets its funding from private donors, foundations, and news organizations. But it's also operated out of offices on the campus of the University of Wisconsin - Madison and students from the school have had access to paid internships and other perks of the University and the WCIJ working together.
Read in browser Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby sing "She Blinded Me With Science"
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 06, 2013 10:26 am Two legends sing and dance. One more successfully than the other.
Read in browser Free-to-share movie on gangs in Birmingham: "One Mile Away"
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 10:17 am Jamie King from VODO (a film company that raises money through crowdfunding and releases the results over BitTorrent with CC licenses) sez, "BritDoc and VODO have come together for this Free-To-Share release of a crucial film on the attempts by two warring gangs in inner-city Birmingham (UK) -- the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew -- to bring peace to their neighbourhoods.
Read in browser Picture Day: wry, superb coming-of-age movie
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 08:40 am Picture Day is one of the best movies I saw last year. It's Kate Melville's directorial film debut, but for those of us who've followed her career since she was the youngest-ever playwright-in-residence at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, it is the apotheosis of everything Melvillian -- witty, wry, insightful material about teen relationships, the dreadful and wonderful desire to experience adult life, and the fundamental bizarreness of being a teen who has the self-awareness to understand how reckless actions are self-destructive but can't seem to give them up.
Read in browser Leaked top-secret court order shows that NSA engages in bulk, sustained, warrantless surveillance of Americans
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 06, 2013 01:25 am In an explosive investigative piece published in the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald details a top-secret US court order that gave the NSA the ability to gather call records for every phone call completed on Verizon's network, even calls that originated and terminated in the USA (the NSA is legally prohibited from spying on Americans).
Read in browser TWA's Idlewild lounge: Escher, eat your heart out
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 05, 2013 11:00 pm No, it's not a lost Escher print, it's a photo of Saarinen's long-lost TWA lounge at Idlewild, and you can buy it as a print:
Circa 1964. "Trans World Airlines Terminal. Idlewild Airport, Queens, New York." Acetate negative by Balthazar Korab (1926-2013), Hungarian-born architectural photographer who documented the work of Eero Saarinen.
Read in browser Time for total war on patent trolls
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 05, 2013 09:21 pm Writing in
The New Yorker, Tim Wu calls for "total war on patent trolls" and lays out a roadmap for attacking the extortionists who are costing the US economy a reported $30B/year by extorting license fees for patents that never should have been issued and don't cover what the patent trolls say they cover.
Read in browser UN makes the connection between surveillance and free speech
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 05, 2013 07:18 pm Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion, has tabled a
report (PDF) to the UN Human Rights Council that makes a connection between surveillance and free expression. This is a first in the UN, and the meat of it is that it establishes the principle that countries that engage in bulk, warrantless Internet surveillance are violating their human rights obligations to ensure freedom of expression:
La Rue reminds States that in order to meet their human rights obligations, they must ensure that the rights to free expression and privacy—and metadata protection in particular—are at the heart of their communications surveillance frameworks.
Read in browser Han Solo in Carbonite Pop-Tarts
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 05, 2013 05:14 pm Last October, IGN's Brian Altano announced a bold design fiction: an imaginary line of "Han Solo in Carbonite" Pop-Tarts. Several months have gone by and this is
still not a thing. The world is broken.
Would You Eat These Star Wars Pop-Tarts? Read in browser NYT: Mexican Family Go Insane
By Mark Frauenfelder on Jun 05, 2013 03:48 pm The Grey Lady at her best: regurgitating
Harry Anslinger's press releases in 1927. (Via
The World's Best Ever)
Read in browser Study: couples who met online more likely to stay together
By Rob Beschizza on Jun 05, 2013 03:28 pm Only
7 percent of couples who met online and subsequently married have so far separated or divorced, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The divorce rate overall is 40-50 percent. [Marketwatch]
Read in browser Eyeball face makeup
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 05, 2013 03:11 pm The Brazilian website "Arte do Medo" identifies this amazing eyeball face horror makeup as originating in Japan, though no other details are forthcoming.
Update: Thanks to BB commenters FakeNina and Daemonworks, this fellow has been identified as Hikaru Cho,
whose Tumblr is here, and whose
personal site is here.
Read in browser Making of "Man Of Steel"
By David Pescovitz on Jun 05, 2013 03:01 pm A 13-minute publicity featurette about the making of Man Of Steel.
Read in browser Art: compacted cube of demolished amusement park
By David Pescovitz on Jun 05, 2013 02:36 pm Artist James Dive's "Once" consists of a 4 x 4 meter cube of demolished and compacted amusement park. A closer look reveals midway prizes, lights, tickets, garishly-painted metal scraps, and other mementos of old time carny fun. I'm just waiting for the bits to begin creaking back into shape like at the end of the movie Christine.
Read in browser Can you trust a sociopath's memoir?
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 05, 2013 02:33 pm I have never killed anyone, but I have certainly wanted to. I may have a disorder, but I am not crazy. In a world filled with gloomy, mediocre nothings populating a go-nowhere rat race, people are attracted to my exceptionalism like moths to a flame.
Read in browser Kickstarter: otherworldly glowing "jellyfish" for the sky
By David Pescovitz on Jun 05, 2013 02:22 pm Two years ago at the Treasure Island Music Festival, I was dazzled by the sight of glowing, otherworldly jellyfish floating above the crowd during the evening performances. I recently learned that those beautiful jellyfish are an art project called
OMG Jellyfish by Patti Lord, Rob Lord (of Winamp fame), and their collaborators.
Read in browser Growing Up Bowie: Mark Dery's "All The Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock Matters"
By Richard Metzger on Jun 05, 2013 02:02 pm Mark Dery's new ebook, All
The Young Dudes: Why Glam Matters (the debut publication from Boing Boing's digital imprint) is a delightfully Derynian cultural excavation of the deeper definition of masculinity in the 20th century and beyond. His extended essay on the post-meterosexual landscape takes as its point of departure the doomed-teen anthem penned by David Bowie and performed by Mott The Hoople:
And what, exactly, was a young dude?
Read in browser Living with HIV in middle age
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 05, 2013 01:49 pm At The New York Times,
John Leland has a moving portrait of people who accepted their own inevitable deaths two decades ago ... and then those deaths didn't happen. Kept alive by HIV-fighting medications, they've watched the disease go from death sentence to little-discussed chronic illness — all while dealing with the not-inconsiderable side effects of both the virus, itself, and the medications used to treat it.
Read in browser Scenes from #OccupyGezi
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 05, 2013 01:45 pm Three photos picked from the
OccupyGeziPics Tumblr, chosen for their vivid incongruities, and also to remind us all that Turkey still fights for the right to protest:
Another photo of the woman in red surfaces. A young girl sells Anonymous masks in Taksim A protester checks her cell phone. Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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